Elemental
by littlesoprano
Summary: For Diaval, Maleficent is the air and earth and water and fire, all in one.
1. Air

I. Air

The first time Diaval sees his mistress take to the sky, it knocks the air from his lungs.

She is courage and power and raw, fearsome splendor. _Magnificent_, beyond all dreams.

No wonder the armies of man had trembled in their armor.

For this, he thinks, is how she must have been in the time _before_. The mistress he'd followed so long had been but a shadow of the untamed radiance before him now.

She is so wildly, fiercely beautiful it dazzles his eyes. The sound of the wind fills his ears—it sings in joy to have her home again.

Diaval tilts back his head to caw in reply, but his human voice can't make the sounds. He strains up on human feet to fly with her, but he is earthbound.

She no longer needs his wings.

But in the next moment the air shimmers, and he is transformed. He is shuttling skyward faster than he has ever flown—lifted in her updraft.

Perhaps, even though she doesn't need his wings, there is a still a place for him beside her. He can _hope_.

They fly together over the Moors.


	2. Earth

II. Earth

Diaval has learned that - even with the thousands of words man has to express what is in his heart - there are times when the heart is too full to speak.

This is such a time.

While cheers ring out from the coronation crowd, he and his mistress look on in eloquent silence. Their brave, sweet Aurora—now Queen of two kingdoms. She beams as radiantly as the dawn for which she was named.

Diaval sees something more subtle, but just as warm, in his mistress' eyes. They glow with quiet pride. He knows it must show in his eyes, too—this great joy at the strength and beauty of one's offspring. It is a feeling known to faerie and man and raven and every creature.

And as they stand side by side, so close their shoulders touch, it comes to him more clearly than ever that they are parents of the same child. He loves her not only as a devoted servant loves his mistress. He loves her not only as a man loves the woman who fills his dreams.

He loves her as a father loves the mother of his child.

It is a love as old as the very earth. It is as rich and deep and nurturing as sun-drenched soil, bringing forth new life.

Standing beside his mistress, watching over their precious Aurora, Diaval's heart is full to bursting. He almost doesn't feel it at first when her fingers brush his...

…then twine and close.

She doesn't turn her head to look at him. She doesn't speak, and neither does he. They simply stand, wordless, with hands connected as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

And it is.


	3. Water

III. Water

Diaval has been transformed ten thousand times, but this is different. Always the magic had swirled around him like a current, shaping him from the outside. Now the magic flows within. It cascades through his veins.

He knows that if he says "into a raven" it will be so.

And if his mistress says it, it will not. She's given that power to him.

"It's done," she says, and it seems a long while until she speaks again. "Now you can go wherever you wish, be whatever you wish. You are no longer my servant, Diaval."

Her gaze is level, her chin lifted high. A queen making a pronouncement over a humble courtier.

_So that's the way of it_, he thinks bitterly. _After so many years, after all we've been through._ But then he looks harder, and sees what she is trying so desperately to conceal. He looks into her eyes—brave, dignified and infinitely sad. It breaks his heart anew.

She doesn't wish him to go. And he does not wish to go.

Why, then, should things be so difficult?

"And if what I wish is to stay with you, Mistress?"

This time she can conceal nothing. The mask falls away, and there is warmth there... for _him. _She smiles, and his heart leaps.

"Then you... then you must stop calling me that."

"Alright," he says, nodding. "Alright... Maleficent."

It startles them both.

It is just a name, but there is _power_ in it—in the way it sounds, flowing from his lips for the first time. It breaks the last barriers between them. They crumble in the flood and are swept away.

Mistress. Servant. No more.

Maleficent and Diaval stand staring at one another in this new world, washed clean of all that had kept them apart.

She moves forward first, but he is there to meet her, covering her hand with his own when she reaches up to caress his cheek. Her eyes flicker rapidly over his, searching. She must find the answer she wanted, because the next moment her mouth is brushing his experimentally—once, twice. Then their eyes slide shut and they flow together, drinking one another in.

When they come apart, she rests her forehead against his. Diaval can feel the weight of her horns, borne up with that slender neck. He cradles her face in his hands and feels the sharp angles, the smooth planes. They help convince him that this is real.

_"Maleficent."_


End file.
